I’m approaching the end of module building for one part of the layout, since I lifted module 9 today. This one is a simple reverse curve with about 16″ of tangent. Actual inches, or a little more than one full passenger car length. Last one will be module 8, which joins two ends of the railroad and will contain the Fall River bridge. This one will be an adventure, since the two ends won’t be exactly parallel and when I measured everything this afternoon after I lifted the previous module, now I find three or four inches less room than I thought I had. This one will be tight.
Meanwhile, I’ve been back downstairs restarting freight car construction, which had been on somewhat of a hiatus (that’s Latin for big piles of stuff that I’ve lost track of the contents of). There are a number of cars that I pulled off the layout because they needed repair or upgrade, for instance so many Branchline cars that didn’t have Dullcote or weathering, when I laid them in the foam cradle boxes they stuck. I can’t tell you the number of doors I’m going to have to re-glue. A few even have foam crumbs stuck to them, which might even count as weathering. 
But I had standardized on the new Kadee couplers, meaning first the 58, then the 148 and the 178 as appropriate. So I’m taking cars that have Kadee coupler boxes, prying them apart and inserting new couplers in them. Works, if you make sure the box goes back together right. Sorry, I don’t screw the coupler boxes on like the nominal best practice is. But I do use brass 2-56 screws in all the truck mounting, so taking the trucks off and getting them back on is no problem.
I had had an Intermountain kit that I’d built as one of the late 40′ PS-1 boxcars with 8′ door, the 39015-39189 series. Undec, I might add. Would have been sometime in the late 90s that I built this model. So since the prototype had 50 ton roller bearing trucks, I’d carved off the truck mounting boss so I could accomodate the Kadee sprung trucks, with their flat mounting pad, since those were the first roller bearing trucks available that were less than 100 ton. Now I’m replacing all those, so I use a piece of 1/8″ tube for a spacer, thread the truck screw into it, then drop that over the truck and screw it back into the body bolster. Not a pretty solution, especially since the spacer has to be very short since if it’s too long, the screw does not bottom out which leaves the car weaving drunkenly down the track. Ask me how I know.
The trucks I used for the replacement for this one are Athearn roller bearing ASF 70 ton trucks, with the 2-3-2 spring pattern. To this day there is no 50-ton roller bearing truck with the 2-2 spring pattern, so I’m sure I’ll replace these trucks yet again someday in the future. Fortunately, the car doesn’t have serious weathering, so new black trucks don’t look too out of place.
My kit Intermountain boxcars all have Kadee coupler boxes, since the Intermountain ones were so crappy. The Branchline ones were always marginal, and half the time something hung up in there (almost all of these were built before the introduction of the Kadee whisker coupler, so they have the folded sheet bronze centering spring) so besides the oversize #5 coupler, they just don’t center right. Fortunately, I gave them all a waiver which I couldn’t do if I had a real car inspector like any serious railroad club would have.
Now, for new Branchline cars, they’re getting the full treatment. I use a Kadee 178 scale pocket, and these I actually do screw in place using real screws. For the Branchline car, you have to cut the frame end back about a tenth of an inch and carve back the corresponding piece of the underframe that’s molded into the bottom of the car. Not nearly as much butchery as you have to do to mount the 178 onto an Intermountain underframe.
I do still have a few old unbuilt, or half built, decorated Branchline cars, but not many. I do have a decent inventory of undecs, and I’ve been able to get a few more from Caboose Hobbies when I see them although it’s really spotty. I’ll worry about that after I work down my existing inventory, though.
Ron Merrick
